Living Next to Leda Barbara Bentley Author

Bentley's deft, ironic intelligence transforms myth, history, and personal experience into poems which fascinate and which throw a dazzling array of angles on what it means to be a woman living in today's stressful urban culture. Jargon is both the m... Read more

Bentley's deft, ironic intelligence transforms myth, history, and personal experience into poems which fascinate and which throw a dazzling array of angles on what it means to be a woman living in today's stressful urban culture. Jargon is both the medium and the target in Telephone Sonnets, fifteen poems charting the adventures of people through communications technology. Classical myths, beasts, and heroines are suddenly suburbanized, and in the title poem wit and mythology combine beautifully to produce a startling vision of a, so it seems, deranged neighbor: Leda swore she could hear a swan. I ask you. A swan./ They're supposed to be mute. But she insisted./ The noise came across as white sound. Less